masterminis.net - where we learn to be a better painter!

Monday, December 30, 2013

I hope each and every one of you had very Hoopy Holidays and you're all looking forward to an extraordinarily Hoopy New Year 2014!

I celebrated the Holidays by taking 6 full days off from the Internet to spend time with my family. Mom's food, boardgames (Zombicide, fully painted!), good times ;)

Concerning long, endangered and early beards

My mom 'threatened' to cut my beard off while I sleep, but I am happy to report that she was joking - there is no end in sight and my beard will boldly continue to grow where no beard had grown before!

HOWEVER, ... The EARLY BEARD special PHASE 1 for our Seasons 1.2 and 1.3 (check it out here) is running out soon™.

Many of you (in fact VERY many) have already ordered the incredible Season 1.2 and 1.3 Bundle - 49€ instead of the regular 58! Some of you even organized bulk orders with your friends to cut down on S&H charges. Again, thank you all so much!

Great news: Production cost covered!

The first 'must-have' of 2014: 1.2/1.3

Many of you asked us, why we don't run a Kickstarter or Indiegogo or another crowdfunding platform.

In short, there are a lot of great things about these platforms, and then there are a lot of not-so-great things about them. Although we are not ruling out that we might use one of them for bigger projects in the future, right now we try to get everything done with your help alone. And because you are all very awesome, I can tell you that the amount of pre-orders we received so far, almost covers the production cost of Season 1.2 and 1.3. THANK YOU!!!

2014: Full steam ahead

I will be back 'in the office' tomorrow evening and then it's "Warp 10" for our next projects. Here a few very early dates for us:

Monday, December 23, 2013

21 Days of Hoopy Holidays are over. What started as a simple idea ("Hey, let's do a Hoopy Calendar with 21 doors) turned into one of the most time-consuming projects we have done in the last year. And one of the most fun ones!

We always say "We are working only for you, the community!" and of course, a lot of companies say that. We just mean it. And we live it.

So before we finalize our giveaway and with the year closing, I think it's a good time to slow down, reflect and think.

A few personal words

The last year was probably one of the best years of my life. A dream that I held for 14 years and that started right on time - on my 42nd birthday - came true. The first year has passed and we have gotten pretty far. For that we are thankful and we can only say: we are merely at the beginning of something big!

Ooooh! Tile 19 reveals a lot!

I have always worked hard and given it all when it came to things that I truly believe in. I have never before worked so hard for anything in my life as I have for starting Painting Buddha. The year went by so fast and sometimes I was too busy or too tired to talk to the people that I wanted to talk to, to thank the people I should thank or to even to live up to my own high standards 100% of the time. But I always tried - and wherever I failed, I know that I can and will do better in the future.

I always knew that 'I' would never be able to do it alone. Good thing I didn't have to! Mati & Ben

Tile for Day 20 - 1 left!

I want to thank Mati and Ben for believing in my dream, for joining me in creating a company that promotes our hobby with the goal of working for the community exclusively. It has been an awesome first year - and all credit goes to these two. Without them, Paintingbuddha is nothing but a crazy idea in some bald but bearded head. I would also want to include Mati's and Ben's families for supporting them in their decision to 'give this a try'. Words are not enough to thank these guys - but I know that they know. Because they are awesome!

Friends & Family

21: OH! There's a lady in the puzzle! Thanks, Santa!

I would also like to thank my family for supporting me with my crazy dream and I would like thank all of the many new friends I was able to make during this past year. I've been in contact with many, many of you eversince we met somewhere on this planet. And I can't wait to meet you all again in 2014.

At the same time I have to apologize to many of my 'older' friends for not being there for them as much as I would have liked to. Even though I often did not have the time to contact you, I have always thought about you. You are a big part of the reason why I have arrived where I am today - and I could not be more thankful for anything.THANK YOU ALL FOR EVERYTHING!Shout-out to our partners

Last but not least, I would like to thank all of our partners that worked with us over the last year. We were lucky to find the right partners that could deliver the quality of product that we wanted to create for you.

Our partners have patiently helped us taking the first steps towards what we plan to be a new era for our hobby. We have just taken the first few small steps, but we have a road-map that extends far beyond what even we can see on the horizon.

The more support we get from the community, the faster we will be able to find out what's behind that horizon. So thank you all for your continued support, for SHARING & ENJOYING our hobby with your friends :)

21 puzzle tiles & key-phrase

The 21 puzzle tiles are part of the artwork for "Season 2.1: PAYDAY". Our current plan is to release season 2.1 at the end of April. Chris Octive from the UK and Matt Cexwish are our painters for this DVD set. And one of the key focus areas of this DVD is 'contrast'. Yes, that's the one everyone tells you that you need more of :D

We hope you enjoyed assembling the puzzle - and as you now, it also gave you the solution to the secret key-phrase (those letters are only visible in the videos!)...

The Ultimate Grand Prize is a three day workshop for you at PB HQ in Berlin. You may bring a friend, if you like. In addition to three days of fun-pact activities and mad ninja skills, you will receive a 210€ CASH PRIZE which you can either apply to your travel expenses (sorry, not included) or spend at our Sponsor for "Season 1.3: Base-Alchemy 1", Battlefield Berlin!

Send us your completed keyphrase to this email address to enter! We'd also love to hear your comments, questions, suggestions and ideas in this mail!

Don't press this button!

If you enjoyed what we did over the last year and if you would like to help us turn on the 'Improbability Drive' to allow us to get to our 'bigger goals' faster, we would not mind if you pressed the following button just once! Any donation will be appreciated and be used 100% for community projects - that means it comes back to you!

Friday, December 20, 2013

We all know the key to finding the Easter Egg is The Answer. 42. A lot of you thought along the lines of morse-codes and I said that that was a pretty hoopy idea. I also indicated that it would not be so bad to forget aboutletters in the context.

My last and final hint will be this:

"In your Universe, Buddha is said to shine his answers upon you. In our Universe the Answer shines its question on the Buddha!"

Mati says, no-one will get it. I say "YES THEY WILL!" - who's right?

Final Q&A sessions coming up

Our final Q&A sessions will be recorded live, with all three of us answering. We'll see how that goes and whether this turns into a catastrophy of galactic proportions or not. :D

With this Video, the Questions for 2014 are finished - but we will continue something along these lines regularly in the future!

Only 4 tiles missing - I get the picture! Do you?

The last tile without much detail is revealed today, the two letters you need for the Ultimate Grand Prize can be found in the video, as usual.

With only 4 tiles remaining, the picture becomes clear. But we wouldn't be our sneaky selves, if we would not have kept the most revealing tiles for last :D

Daily Giveaway Prize Today

Chances to win in our giveaways are EPIC! Most daily giveaways have around 25-35 shares each, some of you even shared and thus entered twice, you clever bunch!

So if you want a piece of the action, just go ahead and SHARE & ENJOY our Facebook posts or this blog post with your Friends on FB and Google+. You have till the 5th of January - and you can choose the posts of which you REALLY want to win the prize (or just share all of them, that would be quite hoopy, too!)

Appropriately, today's prize is FROM THE FUTURE! The FIRST Painting Buddha bust - as Mati told you in the video ;) The Bust is almost finished, but currently still WIP it's about 95.8% finished. 4.2% still missing ;) This miniature will be available early 2014 and will ALSO be our Workshop Mini for next year?

Let us know in the comments below what name YOU would give this guy? If you guess the name we will be giving him, you'll get one for free. Not that you have any chance of getting it right, of course. An no, it's not "Nostrildamus" - although that would be pretty cool, thinking about it :D

We thought that it would be a great idea to bundle both of them up for you and run an 'Early BEARD special' for our supporters to say "THANK YOU" for a wonderful year we had with you.

We did not expect this kind of response! Our webshop glowed white hot with your pre-orders. Believe us, it never gets old for us to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

A Ghost grants us a glance of the Future!

With door #16 we arrived in the Future - and the ghost thereof grants Ben and myself 3 questions each. See what happens next...

Looks like Ben saved my a** again ;)

But like every time when we see a full on double rainbow all the way across the sky we have to ask the same question... "What does it all mean?"

What do YOU think it means? Maybe we'll have to wait until 2014 to see what the Painting Buddha has in store for all of us ;)

Puzzle almost complete!

By now you are all veterans of our "21 days of hoopy holidays" giveaway, so I will spare you a repetition of the rules. Video #2 holds all the information you need, in case you are new ;)

And today it seems that we learn the name of whatever is hidden in the puzzle! The next two letters for the secret key-phrase that can unlock you the ULTIMATE GRAND PRIZE have also been revealed! That's pretty sweet ;)

And since in the Future we have some VERY COOL plans for the Buttons that our supporters receive with their orders (you still have them, I hope! Don't throw them away!), today we will give away 2x 21 random buttons. "Only Buttons?" you might think! You should know by now that everything we do is following some sort of mindblowing masterplan. You want those buttons, believe me :D

SHARE & ENJOY

And don't forget to check out our EARLY BEARD special on our Season 1.2 and 1.3 DVD sets. These two DVDs are a MUST for every painter - both for gamers and competitive painters! Trust me on that one ;)

GREAT NEWS from Sergeant Blackart! "Jack the Plucker" will be released for a good cause!"Jack the Plucker" - extremely limited availability beginning of 2014Listen up, everybody! The "Best of Show" miniature at Monte San Savino was not only a one-off-piece. It will be released as an extremely limited cast at the beginning of 2014!

All profits will be given to the Fondazione P.U.P.I., a foundation that focuses on strengthening families and children who need help. An awesome cause and of course, we here at Painting Buddha will support Sergeant Blackart with this project by SHARING & ENJOYING this awesome initiative! On Sergeant Blackart's Website we can read:

"The project, born many months ago inside the collaboration with MuMi - Museum of Miniatures, is under license of Brom himself. It’s really special for us since we decided, thanks to the support of Brom and Javier Zanetti, to give all the markup to Fondazione P.U.P.I. This is only the beginning, we will give you more details as soon as we will be ready, but you can be sure the best is yet to come!"If you are interested in getting your hands on what is one of the greatest Minis of all times from one of the greatest concept arts of the last years - here's your chance: Head over to Sergeant Blackart's website and contact them with a short message. They will let you know as soon as the sale on this extremely limited miniature will start!

Ben, Mati and myself would like to thank you so much for your trust and your continued support! It is awesome to see how many Bruddhas out there support our cause. It is exhilarating and humbling at the same time :) THANK YOU ALL!

Need a last minute present?

One of you had a great idea: "I just pre-ordered the Season 1.2/1.3 bundle as a gift for my brother. It would be great if you guys had like a printable gift certificate or something that I could put 'under the tree'".

Our DVD sets surely make a great present and your idea is so good that we worked on it right away ;)

So for all of you who need a last minute present, we have created three gift certificates for you to download and print!

Season 1.2 - Freehands & Bannerswith Stephan "Derwish" RathEasy to follow step-by-step routine that will help you create mindblowing banners and freehands - regardless of whether you are a Gamer or a competitive painter!
Download: JPEG - PDF

In just a few years of painting miniatures, Stephan "Derwish" Rath has become one of the top painters worldwide. When it comes to perfect execution, smooth blendings and intricate freehands, he is one of the best.

So it may seem surprising (especially after you see the banners he is painting!) that his first of a two-part DVD series is targeted at 'Beginner & Intermediate" levels. It is easy to think "I would never be able to do that!" when you see his works.

But you are able to do it - in fact, everyone can! Stephan has developed an easy to follow, step-by-step routine that does not even require you to be an artist or even artistically inclined.

Believe me, I personally can vouch for that! ;)

The Banner on the right, for example, is the beginner banner. Surprised? Wait till you try it for yourself!

The DVD set consists of 2 DVDs and will come in a beautiful Collector DVD Box. A booklet with banner designs and helpful tips & tricks completes this awesome set.

Season 1.3: Base Alchemy Volume 1: Earth

And since one awesome DVD can't come alone, we are equally proud to present our first volume of our "Base Alchemy" cycle - Earth.

"ベースの錬金術" (beesu no renkinjitsu or "Base Alchemy" will be a series of 5 DVD sets that provide in-depth coverage of these subjects: Earth - Water - Fire - Air and Iron.

The first volume, 'Earth' covers three different base-types: gaming bases (which easily could serve as show-bases as well!), insert bases (for army and unit displays) and an ultimate nature showbase.

You can follow along step-by-step, from planning and building all the way to painting your bases. And with Ben & Matt, entertainment is included at no extra charge ;)

The first volume will consist of 2 or 3 DVDs (that is not 100% clear yet) and will come in a beatifully designed DVD Collectors Box.

Better than Season 1.1?

If you are familiar with our Season 1.1 - Target Identified DVD set, you can imagine what kind of quality products we are in the process of designing with Season 1.2 and 1.3. We received rave reviews and hundreds of 'Thank you' mails from happy Bruddhas all over the Planet.

And we actually think, the next two DVD sets will even be better! On the one hand we have invested in some better sound equipment, microphones and monitoring equipment, on the other hand (as you can also see from our Adventskalender Videos), we have learned a lot about Adobe Premiere, After Effects & co.

Early Beard Special as our "Thank You" to our Supporters!

Over 1000 hours and filming, editing and post-production will finally culminate in beautifully designed, high-value DVD sets - with a retail of only 29€. And since we are just entering the pre-order process, we have introduced the Early BEARD Special!

Until December 31st, each DVD set is not 29€ but only 25€ - and if you go for theBundle deals, you can even save more money!

Delivery of the finished DVDs is currently scheduled for the end of February (+/- 2 weeks).

Need moar languages!

Seasons 1.2 and 1.3 will include the following subtitles: German, English, Spanish, Italian and French.

We also would like to include these languages: Polish, Swedish, Danish, Russian and Japanese, and we might need your help for other languages you might want. We will put up a separate post for this in the next couple of weeks.

That's all for now

So that's all for now - I am sure that you have a lot of questions. If possible, please ask them in the Youtube comments section - or below in the comments here. We will answer them in our next Q&A session!

Prize & Tile of the Day

The puzzle is almost complete. But believe me, sticking with it is worth it as the most juicy tiles are still to be revealed!

The next two letters of the key-phrase to the GRAND PRIZE are announced in the Video as per usual.

And since so many people seem to like our Painting Buddha Supporter T-Shirt giveaways, we will add two more to the pile. These will be the LAST Supporter T-Shirt giveaways EVER! ;)

The Ultimate Grand Prize!

And as promised - here is the Ultimate Grand Prize!

With the correct key-phrase you can win:

A three day private workshop for you and a friend at Painting Buddha HQ.

We will announce all the details in a separate video ;) Oh, yes, there are quite a few more perks to this giveaway - but I am sure you are not surprised about that ;)

Monday, December 16, 2013

It is done - after some much needed sleep over the weekend, three doors have been opened in a day and we are almost caught up ;)

I guess I need Santa to get me a 42 disk RAID array so I don't have to wait hours on my render machine ;)

Question and Answers 71-84

As you probably can tell from the videos, we had a lot of fun answering your questions - both serious or silly ;)

The hardest part was not laughing all the time during editing - very exhausting indeed as I mostly failed at this :P

We will definitely keep something like these Q&A session up for the future as we think that it's a great opportunity for you to get to know us a little better and for us to respond to you more directly. Full of win! :P

Season 1.2 and 1.3 Update behind door #15

We will open door number 15 some time tomorrow around noonishly™. And with that a whole new era will start for Paintingbuddha - our first .x releases.

Don't expect it to be normal :P

Tile behind door #14

The picture of our little puzzle becomes clearer and clearer.

Feel free to share your current status on our Facebook Page - as you can already see into the future!

Soon the picture will be completed and the most interesting parts will be revealed ^^ Coincidentally, we saved the best for last :P

Two more letters to the key-phrase have been unveiled in the video and I am sure many of you are very close to solving the riddle. We will tell you what to do with that soon™.

And today's hoopy prize is...

Two more Supporter T-Shirts for a lucky winner and whoever he or she wants to make happy with the partner look ;)

And if you would like to see how great these T-shirts really are, I recommend this post. Much Buddha. Very Quality. Such Fair!

Once you truly understand our commitment to work for you and (y)our community exclusively, you will proudly wear the shirt and boldly glow where no Nerd has glowed before! :D

Hm... Next edition: Glowing shirts,... Typo gave me an idea :D

So head over to our Facebook Page and SHARE our post with your friends on Google+ and/or Facebook for a chance to win a daily prize. Each share enters you for the respective daily giveaway.

And sharing twice is not only twice as nice - it also doubles your chances of winning the respective daily prize. Until January 5th!

Door #14 will follow in a few hours - and then the following door #15 will hold the release details for Seasons 1.2 and Season 1.3. Turns out to be an exciting Monday ;)

We got so many awesome (and silly) questions from you guys - I hope you enjoy the answers ;)Believe me, cutting out us cracking up after every other question is a lot of work :D

If you like this kind of thing, we'll keep it up in the future, too - let us know!

Speaking of the future - with door #15 the Ghost of the Future will tell you what we have in store for you for the rest of the year - and more importantly - for 2014!

Tile of the day + daily giveaway prize

Slowly but surely the puzzle reveals its secret image - and grants you a glance into the FUTURE!The two letters that you need to unlock the secret key-phrase which will allow you to enter for the ULTIMATE PRIZE of our 21 days of giveaways can only be found in the videos - as always ;)This door's giveaway miniature is another beautifully sculpted and perfectly casted miniature donated by "Nuts Planet". This time it is the WWII German DAK. Somehow he reminds me of Indiana Jones, don't know why :D

The quality of the cast is something that I have very rarely seen. Hats off to our South Korean friends! As always: You have time until January 5th, 2014 to SHARE & ENJOY our Adventskalender posts. Every share equals one ticket and with it one chance to grab the daily prizes.

Some of you already got strategies up where they share once in the morning and once at night. Very clever :D

On the 21st and final day of our giveaway we will tell you how you can win the GRAND PRIZE.

SHARE & ENJOY

And if you like what we do - and what we are trying to do - why not support us?Unprecedented value, awesome quality, high nerd factor:

In the last couple of days we received a lot of emails from Bruddhas overseas as well as some from Bruddhas here in Europe inquiring about the whereabouts of their orders.

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We experience extremely long shipping times to the US, Canada and Australia right now.

According to DHL, these packages are very likely to be stuck in the respective country's customs offices as these seem to be overwhelmed by the incredibly high amount of shipments in this year's Holiday season.

For example, we experience shipping times for the US with now over four weeks (!) - a process that normally only takes 7-10 days.

We know it's frustrating

We send all packages with the best service we can get from DHL and the German Post respectively, and we know that it is frustrating to have to wait on an order. Believe us, it is at least as frustrating to us.

What makes things worse is that once the orders have reached the country of destination, (for pretty much every country outside of Europe), the tracking information stops right at the border, so we cannot give you additional information on where in the respective country the orders are. Again, that's just how it is and regrettably, we cannot change it.

Unfortunately, we have absolutely no control over the shipping process.

Something for 'under the tree'

Ben is currently preparing downloadable Gift Certificates for all of you who are waiting on their orders. We still hope that your orders will arrive in time for Santa, but I think it's 'better to be safe than sorry'.

We will

link those Gift Certificates in this post as soon as they are done,

we will also announce it on our Facebook page at that time

AND we will send this information via email to all of you who we KNOW have not received your order yet.

But what we really want for Christmas is for you to receive your orders. You hear that, Santa?

All of us here at Painting Buddha would like to apologize for the long shipping times.

A weekend full of necessary sleep will be wrapped up with Question & Answers videos four, five and six behind doors 12, 13 and 14.

And then, later tonight, we will finally reveal more details on the upcoming Season 1.2 and 1.3 (Teasers here and here) behind door 15. We are very excited about these releases and we think, so should you ;)

Tiles & prizes

Another tile is revealed and two more letters for the secret key-phrase that can give you the chance to win the ULTIMATE GRAND PRIZE can be found in today's video.

One of the Q&A videos will reveal what the ULTIMATE GRAND PRIZE is, by the way ;)

Today's daily giveaway - which you can enter by simply sharing this post (or our FB post) with your friends on Facebook or Google+ is another miniature sponsored by Sergeant Blackart. It has again been sponsored by none other than Rusto himself - thank you so much!

Chief Smokingclouds is waiting to be won by you ;) As with all giveaways of our "21 Days of Hoopy Holidays", today's daily prize will also be drawn among all entries on January 5th, 2014. All prizes will be sent out in January next year!

So, good luck to everyone!

And don't forget - 2 more doors coming today, plus more information on Season 1.2 and 1.3 later tonight - including something new for us: